


The Wolves Come at Night

by LeTempest



Series: Q-Divison: Tumblr ficlets [5]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Torture, tortured!Q
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-09
Updated: 2013-02-09
Packaged: 2017-11-28 17:29:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/677005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeTempest/pseuds/LeTempest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It has to be an inside job. It has to be. Q can think of no other way that four MI6 workers can get in the same car, on their way to the same place, in total secrecy, and then just disappear. It’s too perfectly planned, too perfectly executed....</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wolves Come at Night

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr prompt for Anon: I would kill for a severely angst Q-torture fill. <3 pleeeease
> 
> Standard disclaimer: I don't own Bond and I make no money from this fic.

It has to be an inside job. It has to be. Q can think of no other way that four MI6 workers can get in the same car, on their way to the same place, in total secrecy, and then just disappear. It’s too perfectly planned, too perfectly executed.

Four of the greatest minds in the country and none of them see it coming. Not until they are gassed. But by then the car is moving. The Plexiglas that separates them from the driver shuts and seals. Then he is choking on a toxin he couldn’t even see. The doors are locked. They are trapped.

~*~

            The building he wakes in is cold and damp. The room is huge; the sagging, crumbling brick are exposed. A warehouse. There are a million warehouses in the whole of England, if that’s even where they are still. He has no idea how long they have been out. But the arms tied behind his back are stiff so he knows it’s been several hours at least. He takes a breath. He knows why they are here. They have been found out. Someone knows who they are, knows what they do, knows what they know…or more accurately, means to find out what they know.

            It something they covered the moment he entered MI6, and then again, in far greater detail, when old Q brought him on as R. He has a story created by MI6, a paper trail to back it up. He is Quinn Harper, an archivist for the British Museum. He manages the online catalogue and helps keep the website up to date. He is 28 years. His parents live in Bristol, in the house where he grew up. He has an older sister and a younger brother. He was in a relationship with a doctor, Jonathan Kent, until two months ago. Jonathan thought they should see other people. Quinn kept the cat though. His name is Lucius.

             That is his story. That is the only story he will ever tell. Because he is the Quartermaster. Loyal to Queen and country, even if it means his life.

~*~

            They kill Milo the first day.

            He was younger than Q, barely 23. But he was an intern. No security clearance, no intel. He was only there to fetch coffee and answer phone calls. But he was a good boy, a bright and kind and clever boy with a whole host of potential. He’d needed the experience, so they had brought him along for the conference. Now he was dead, shot in the back of the head because his brain held no use to them.

            He had a girlfriend, and a mother. Q would be sure to send flowers, and when M wasn’t looking, he would pull the right strings to see the bills were paid for the ones he left behind.

            Q watches the light leave they younger man’s eyes, watches the blood pool into a crimson halo. But it’s not the mix of blood and brain matter that makes the Quartermaster lose the contents of his stomach. It’s the small chocked sound of fear the boy makes, a quiet half sob of desperation as the bullet enters his skull.

~*~

            They are always separated when the questioning started, but the rooms are close enough that they can hear each other’s screams. 

            For Q, it was bland, basic, and brutal. Fists and knees and elbows. Bruises and broken bones. Perhaps because he was the only man. But the abuse only made him clamp down on what he knew.

            He plays his part though, played the simpering, fearful archivist for all it was worth.

            “My name is Quinn Harker,” he whimpered, ‘Q’s a nickname I had as a boy.”

“I work for the museum. I don’t know anything about MI6.”

“I don’t know any Quartermasters! I’ve never been in he navy!”

Lie after lie, blow after blow.

No one can accuse the Quartermaster of weakness. With every exertion of physical strength, he steels his thoughts. Mind over matter. Brain over brawn.

MI6 will find them. It’s only a matter of time.

The girls have it worse though. Agatha, a forty something mother of two, they had burned her with cigarettes. But Laura, poor, sweet Laura, they’d jammed reeds beneath her fingernails and stuck her hands in water.

~*~

            Two days pass. Then three, then four.

            Each day the fight gets harder. Q is the mouthy one though; he tries to bring the brunt of the punishment on himself. There is one man in particular that always comes for him. He is big and beefy and balding. He stinks of cigar smoke and cheap gin. Hired gun, professionals don’t smell or dress so poorly. Quinn would know. His records don’t show that he wasn’t such a good boy once. All that’s been erased.

            But this one, he likes to hurt. He knocks Q about for hours. But then another comes along. A dark haired fellow with a sleek look and a strong accent. Q learns to fear him.

            He drags the edge of a knife just under Q’s left eye, holds his stare while he pressed the blade into the soft flesh and for a moment Q was truly afraid this one would blind him.

            The man smiles, his mouth full of perfect, white teeth.

            A wolf’s grin.

~*~

            The 7th, they kill Laura.

            Not the men, but Q and Agatha.

            She is dying and they know it. Her stomach has turned hard and purple where they kicked her again and again. Internal bleeding. It’s a poor way to go. So Q holds her against his chest in the night, and Aggie smothers her with one of the thin blankets they were given. She only fights for a moment, clawing at Q’s arms. Then she stops and just holds on to him. He sobs with out meaning to but Agatha’s face is set.

            They lay her out on her back afterward; try to arrange the tattered remains of her clothes in some semblance on modesty. They fold her hands over her chest, and Agatha finger combs the girl’s dark hair and closes her eyes. Q wraps her in a blanket, safe and warm. He and Agatha curl together in the far corner and watch her through the night.

            “I’ll be next,” Aggie says quietly.

            “No,” Q answers, “ no one else dies. They’ll find us. They won’t kill you.”

            “They won’t have to,” she replies, “I have a heart condition. The moment they start sticking my head under water or chocking me the way they did her, the way they do you, my heart will give out. And they will. They’re getting desperate.”

~*~

            On the 9th day Agatha dies. They hold her head under water and her heart gives, just like she said. And Q is alone.

~*~

            They burn him now, and not with just with cigarettes, but with the heated end of a fireplace poker. They lash it across his naked back and sides, watching him cry out as he dangles from the hook they have looped his bound wrists over.

            They dislocate his shoulder while they toss him about. He looses two teeth in the back of his mouth, and there is a chance of a fracture on his right cheekbone. His ribs ache with every breath.

            He doesn’t break. He won’t break. Because it isn’t just for queen and country now. It’s for Milo, and Laura, and Agatha. It’s because someone needs to tell their families that they were brave.

            But the damage is starting to take its toll. He lies at night, on the matted blankets that still smell like death and he thinks. He runs through a list of names, of people he would like to say goodbye to. Mom and dad first, then Gwen and Thomas. Jonathan, his one time fiancée. Cara, his best friend from growing up. Eve, who made life at MI6 all the more bearable once she arrived, who could always be counted one in a pinch. Darla, who worked in personal and insisted on mothering him. Asho, who had bonded with him over cups of Earl grey and insisted he join their weekly card games. Tanner, who was cleverer than people gave him credit for. But most of all, James Bond, though he wasn’t sure why.

            James Bond was an enigma; the kind of puzzle Q enjoyed dismantling. He was strong and masculine, but also clever, and unbothered by what he wanted. He’s had no issues propositioning Q, first with dinner or coffee and later with sex. Not that Q had minded. Celibacy didn’t really suit either of them. And the banter was nice, as was the easiness of it all. No strings, no questions, no expectations. Friends with benefits.

            So why did Q’s thoughts keep returning to the 00 agent?

            That was one question he didn’t have the answer to.

~*~

            On day 10th they stopped giving him food and cut his water by at least half, not counting what he inhales when they hold him under.

            It’s day 12 now.

            Q can feel his body shutting down.

            They break all the fingers on his left hand, his dominant hand. They snap his collarbone. Cool and purposeful. The burns still feel too hot on his skin.

            Still Q clings. To life, to hope, to anything he can grab onto.

            In a fit of rage, dark hair slams a knife into his shoulder and twists.

            His grip slips a little then.

~*~

He loses track of the days.

~*~

            He wakes to shouting and gunshots. He curls into a ball and covers his head until the noise stops.

            There are footsteps and he knows the time has come to do what he has to. He slips his hand beneath the blankets and his hand closes on it. It isn’t much, just rusted old nail he managed to pry out of a half hidden crack in the floor. It’s stripped and bent but it’s nearly as long as his hand and sharp. He had pried it from the floor when his fingers still worked. He’d kept it, hid it, praying the opportunity for escape would arise and he could use it.

            He holds his body still as he can, but the shakes don’t stop. They haven’t in days, they roll over his body, bone jarring and unstoppable. He’s blazing hot and the sweat makes his hair cling to his forehead. He bites the inside of his lip to make himself focus. He only has one chance.

            More shots, closer now. Then nothing but silence.

            There are footsteps in the hall after a moment, quick, quiet and sure. But not familiar. He knows the sounds of their gait now, the first warning as to who is coming for him on a particular day or night. But these steps are different, vaguely familiar but not placed among the faces he has grown to fear. There is shuffling and the jingle of keys. There is the scraping of metal on metal, a brief moment of unintelligible cursing, then the stranger finds the right key and the tumblers turn in the look. Q’s fingers tighten on the nail and he sends out one last, soundless plea to the universe that this will just end already, one way or the other.

            The figure who enters is careful, sweeping around the room cautiously.

            “Q? Are you alive?”

            His muscles clench. He can’t take another day. He knows it. He exhales, shallow and shuttering. The steps are closer now. He hears the slip of a gun into a holster, a sound he was familiar with in another life. There is the shuffle of fabric and the man, he knows that was a man’s voice, kneels at his side. He is blonde haired, his face lined but still young.

            “Q?” the voice asks again, almost concerned.

            He strikes, syphoning every ounce of strength he has left into the motion. A sound, more animal than human, escapes him as he snaps up and lunges, aiming the nail for the man’s jugular.

            A hand catches his brittle wrist, stopping him inches from his target. He snarls and struggles but his other hand is useless, swollen and purple. He resorts to elbows, to knees, to teeth. Calloused hands grab for his shoulders, as if to pull him forward and the pain of his broken collarbone goes from a deep ache to a nerve-shattering bolt. He screams and his body turns to water, completely out of his control. He drops, boneless and panting. He is sure he would have thrown up, had there been anything in his stomach.

            The hands pull back the moment he cries out, leaving him to crumble back onto the filthy pallet, shaking in a cold sweat.

            A long moment passes. Fingers brush lightly against his hair and he flinches.

            “Dear god Q, what have they done to you?”

            “Quinn,” He whimpers, “I told you. My name is Quinn.”

            Something light and satiny is placed over his bare torso.

            “Shh,” the man hushes, moving into Q’s line of sight. His fingers press against Q’s jugular. He can see the man’s lips counting the beats. Ice cool eyes focus on his expensive watch and Q realizes this is a face he knows.

            “Moneypenny, I found him,” James says.

            Q’s eyes slip shut.

~~~

 


End file.
